Two weeks after bauxite miner, Bosai was fined $1 million for waste water discharges from its tailings pond into the Kara Kara Creek, an apparent breach in the dyke surrounding the pond has led to flooding in the Linden community of Noitgedacht.
Speaking with Stabroek News a resident of the area, Denise Gordon said that at about 3 am yesterday her family woke up to several inches of water in their yard.
“I was really upset and scared. I operate a catering school and the water damaged the floor and furniture in one of the rooms. I have a lot of electrical equipment in the school and I was scared it would be damaged but my husband went to Bosai and they responded swiftly,” Gordon explained.
She stressed that there had been no rainfall that evening so it was unlikely that there was overtopping.
In December, Bosai, a Chinese company had complied with a directive from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to cease the operations that produce the waste water, it is not clear if they have since resumed operations.
Stabroek News reached out to EPA Executive Director Dr. Vincent Adams who explained that this is one of the questions his agency hopes to have answered when they conduct a site visit today.
“We are still investigating,” he said when asked about the cause of the flooding.
Gordon however is sure there was a breach.
“The dyke break and the water and bauxite was just pouring out. It was thick with bauxite,” she noted.
According to Gordon, Bosai has worked to clean the yards and homes of the five residences affected by the flooding and promises to repair and/or reimburse those affected for their losses. She also said that representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency’s office were on site as the company workers used pipe water and Jeyes fluid to clean the residue from the areas affected.
She however remains concerned that a similar situation could cause more damage to her property and severely affect her livelihood.
“They need to properly maintain the dyke. They promised it wouldn’t happen again but I remember it happening before in about 2000 when the entire community was flooded. If we didn’t see it and go to Bosai we might have flooded again. This is not good enough,” Gordon lamented.
Her husband Orrin Gordon, who is the Regional Executive Officer of Region 10, shared a similar concern.
“All the entities operating and impacting the environment need to pay attention and have a plan. In the case of Bosai they need to ensure they have a drainage plan to go with their washing plant and in cases of emergency such as this there must be a backup plan,” he noted.
Asked if the Region has been or should be involved in crafting any such plan Gordon said since the company was operating in Linden it was the duty of the Mayor and Town Council generally and their environmental health department specifically to address the issue.
Summoned
Stabroek News had previously reported that the company was summoned to the EPA on December 24th, when it was fined and directed to immediately stop discharges into the Kara Kara Creek even if it meant shutting down its operations.
Bosai complied with the EPA’s directive by ceasing the operations that produce the waste water however, there remained some discharge into the creek due to rainfall and the inadequate holding capacity of the tailings pond.
Adams had confirmed to Stabroek News that complaints were made to the agency by a member of the public. He said that it was lodged on November 22nd 2019, and the agency immediately started investigating.
“…Two investigations began; one on the 27th and the other on the 29th, from the EPA offices here in Linden and Georgetown, respectively. The checks revealed that the complaints were valid; that is there were discharges into the creek. The water was discoloured and the turbidity was very high. The material is not toxic but it’s the physical impairment issue. Besides the aesthetics, living things in the creek need oxygen to survive and this was a hindrance to that,” he explained.
A source had told this newspaper that an overflow due to heavy rainfall had led to the discharge as the tailings pond didn’t have the capacity for certain amounts of liquids.
“What we normally do is wash the bauxite and it’s that water which is channelled into a tailings area. In that tailings area they also dispose [from] the air filtration system, that is the dust, so the dust is disposed into the tailings. Especially when it rains, you would have an overload and then that is discharged into the Kara Kara, which flows into the Demerara River,” the source explained.
When Adams was asked if the agency had an idea of how long there had been discharges, he said that they were unsure as it was only when the report was made that the agency investigated.
The company was called in and Adams said that Bosai admitted that it knew of the problem and was working on fixing it. “They admitted that they knew there was a problem and are cooperating fully,” he said.
On 24th December, the company was officially slapped with the maximum fine, even as Adams once again lamented how paltry it is. “We issued them a letter with a fixed penalty or a fine of $1,066,000, which is the maximum we can impose for polluting the environment,” he said.
